Success in SMS Promotions

We’ve been telling our customers for years that sending offers and promotions via SMS can generate great results, but what does good look like?

Here’s a run-down of some of the best results our customers have told us about over the past few years…

Tastecard, a dining club with 3.2 million members throughout the UK, ran a promotion with a ‘£1 for 90 days membership’ offer to prospects and lapsed members, to increase new member acquisition.

By using SMS they were able to reach customers directly, as well as include important membership information through short URLs. The campaign led to a steady increase in membership purchases, and an uplift in traffic to the website. By adding tracking to short links in their text messages, they saw up to a 10% click through rate to the mobile sign up form.

The project was so successful for Tastecard, they are now considering rolling out SMS campaigns to active members with special offers for their favourite restaurants.

Booker, a wholesaler and online retailer with over 170 stores in the UK, wanted to send offers, prices, and competitions to their business contacts quickly and accurately. They started by building up their contact list with a keyword on one of their shortcodes, “BOOKER” on 60777. With this, they were able to collect over 32,000 new numbers to send their promotional messages too.

The messaging campaigns that followed were a resounding success – for example, one customer increased their normal order of one box to two pallets, all as a result of receiving Booker’s texts.

Carnage UK run fancy-dress themed nights out for students in many cities throughout the UK. For their campaigns, they targeted customers who had previously bought a ticket online with messages selling tickets for the next event. They also gathered data from new students using a keyword, “CARNAGE”, on our shared short code. They added sub keywords for each city at no extra cost, e.g. “CARNAGE LIVERPOOL”, so they could sort the new contacts into the most relevant group.

Carnage thought carefully about the timing of their messages, and sent them during the ad breaks of popular soaps and Saturday night television, when their target audience of students were likely to be the most receptive. In the four hours following their message sends, online sales increased by 50%.

The English National Opera used SMS promotions to shift last minute tickets for some of their events. They sent the special offers and show information to their opted in contact list, and generated over £8,000 profit from just £500 spent on their texts.

These kinds of results aren’t just reserved for big businesses, anyone can see the benefits of an SMS campaign with the right planning and knowhow. Learn everything you need for success with our free e-guide, Promotions and Discounts with SMS, or call our customer services team for some advice to get started.